Attached Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/03/game_cos_3d_lawsuit/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/03/game_cos_3d_lawsuit/ http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=8236 http://www.actiontrip.com/rei/comments_news.phtml?id=110104_6 Care to guess where that leaves vendors of 3D modeling and rendering software? Don't mess with Texas. Nuke it preemptively.

After scanning the patent, it seems to me that the prior art on this goes back to Leonardo, or whoever first used the pinhole camera to form projections on a wall.

Assume nothing. The prior art that should have invalidated the patent on the OBJECT/EMBED HTML tags was dismissed by the first court as "not having been substantial enough" to matter. There's prior art for this case too but it could get ugly. When Unisys cracked down on vendors of graphics programs for .GIF export, all the vendors had to do was switch to .PNG. This time we're talking about a concept so generic it can't be gotten around. I read the Unisys contract back when it was still relevant, and it made NO exceptions for vendors of shareware or freeware. I sorely doubt McKool will be more generous. Wings3D, Blender, POV-ray, all of these programs rely on rendering, including for simple wire-frame modeling (which is the closest in spirit to what the original Tektronix patent was for). If they have to license their renderers under terms similar to Unisys' (that is, based on the number of downloaded copies currently in use) it could put them out of business overnight. Still think I'm Chicken Little?

American law is crazy.
They didnt actually invent this so how can they patent it? In british law you actually have to invent something to patent it. Why have they waited till now to sue? Most people dont let hundreds of people copy something and then sue them.

Message edited on: 11/03/2004 19:21

well well well tis bullshit. as the article says... this has been around since about 1982. Elite which uses all the techniques in the patent was released in 1984. also the Atari game about tanks... hope they enjoy being laughed outta court and will some please crack down on these joke patents? well. not before I've sued Microsoft and apple for my 1900 patent for using words spelt in english and my 1700's patent for Ikons...

There's been quite a few stories on slashdot about this sort of thing recently. People are taking out all sorts of silly patents. If it continues for long enough, it has the potential to kill software development. Worrying.

I've had serious concerns about software patents for a long time now. And did you know that someone owns a patent on using a side panel or frame to hold links which open into a bigger, main window (i.e., a normal frameset menu setup)? The U.S. Patent system is truly corrupt. Don't get me started. bonni

I wonder if I could get a patent for cave paintings or Egyptian hieroglyphs...

oh..and I invented trilobites..and everything after the Pre-Cambrian extinction..;)

Hey, I wanna patent my theory on dinosuars. My theory is that one end is thin, the middle is thick, and the other end is thin. ;-P

Let's not laugh too hard just yet. In 1981, a scientist tried to patent a genetic sequence for an oil-eating bacterium they'd engineered. Most people thought it was a joke and that no court on earth would allow it. (United States Supreme Court in Diamond v. Chakrabarty) Chakrabarty won. Several years later the only thing that cannot be patented in terms of life is a "full human being." Welcome to the new millenium. ;)

We did have an outbreak of these kind of patents in Britain. It was towards the end of Queen Elizabeth I reign when she gave patents to some of her favourites. Sir Francis Drake, for example, held around 18 of these silly patents including patents on the potatoe and bread made from wheat. They acted as a nice, steady source of income for the recipient that the crown didn't have to raise funds to give to someone through taxation. One of her last acts as monarch was to void all of these patents.

No such farking luck here. Back in 2000 I said I'd cast my vote for whichever candidate promised to put the PTO under Star Chamber-like Senate investigation. There's a post on fark.com which points out that Lucasfilm Entertainment was producing games in 1983 and 1985 which respectively used antialiased perspective vector rendering and realtime XYZ 3D camera movement through a dynamically generated fractal landscape. If this isn't prior art I'll be Goddamned to know what is. And this was on a 6502/GTIA chip combination, people. (Old Atari 8-bit computer enthusiasts will remember the aforementioned games as leaked games Ballblazer/Ballblaster and Rescue on Fractalus/Behind Jaggi Lines).

I'm sure all the companies being sued can afford the cost of a crack squad of hit men. Perhaps Rockstar games can just send the guys behind Manhunt, and GTA to do the wet work?

Just kidding... or am I? ^_^

Message edited on: 11/04/2004 10:17

Attached Link: Acacia Streaming Patent

This sounds similar in its broad scope to Acacia buying up unused patents and suing companies for royalties. You can follow up the link to see their various nefarious activities. It does sound as if the patent system is broken when it comes to new technologies. I only skimmed through the patent provided at the link above (need to enter the # into the search field at the patent office and limit the hits to the patent number in Field 1. From my quick look, it appears to be nothing more than a methodology to stream media rather than an actual demonstration of the process. The guts of the patent is a diagram that is a simple 1-chart block diagram. Neither this image or the lengthy text present any information how to transform this notional idea into a workable product. Acacia has been filing suits against video downloads on internet sites, satellite TV, and compressed transmission of cable video. That provides an idea of how ridicously broad the patent is. It's amazing that it can stand up to a legal challenge, but big companies have agreed to pay licenses rather than press the issue in court. You've got to love the legal system. http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/cat_acacia.shtml

If there is any way possible to make a buck without actually doing any work. You can bet my fellow Americans will find a way. In the old days our country had a strong work ethic. But that got outsourced too. ;-) -ScottA

Attached Link: Another Register Article

They are going for everybody...

Message edited on: 11/04/2004 17:03

That's just more powerful buisnesses to help push for the utter destruction of this law firm. The goddamn nerve of these people blows my mind. Honestly if this isn't a poster child for tort reform I've never seen one! I just feel sorry for the smaller buisnesses that are getting picked on until the big ones deal with this.

pfff copyright and patent bullshit like these always come from the same area, and this system is utterly biased far way to the absurd.. in my country you wouldnt be able to patent somethign as generic and obvious... hey our eyes are making the same thing too !!! would they ask us to pay for our eyes, mutilate them or something ? :( s it is just sick, man, sick and that's all i wonder.. WHO has the patent for ALPHABET, cause this guy just can sue the entire world !!! you know, the 26 regular signs, maybe add in the accentuated characters and the like... I also saw people in usa register/copyright commonwords such as table, windows, shelves and such... what frigthen me the most is that the most ridiculous, unfair and stoopid it is, the most odds it has to succed in rpissing off everybody and messing with everything !!!

They'll fail if they try to take on the big companies. Acacia's a joke.

.

I know someone that works for McKool Smith, but not in the litigation end. The only information there was to be had is that for a couple of months or so, they've had a conference room set up with several video games and attorneys and their aides have been spending hours in there playing them.

Regarding the comment on Texas, well being a life long proud citizen I do have something to say about it, but since you shouldn't say anything if it's not nice...

Message edited on: 11/05/2004 12:07

The definition of obscenity is "I know it when I see it". This is f**king obscene. RC Disgusted

Has anybody noticed the conicidence that this suit was started in Texas and was announced the day AFTER the self-righteous bible-thumping morons of America elected the the most dangerous man in history since Adolph Hitler to the White House? I think we can expect to see a lot more of this because the people controlling this country are very convincing liars and are in the habit of changing any laws that don't support their position or suit their needs. They've done it already and they are about to do a lot more now that their power base is stable for 4 more years. And the idiotic sheep who elected them actually believe that it is all about "family values", the "right to life" and "protecting our homeland" when none of the elected officials care a damn about any of those issues because thier interest is OIL, MONEY, POLITICAL INFLUENCE, and CONTROL. Thanks to the gullibility of the majority of Americans, we can pretty much kiss the Constitution, civil rights, fairness and equality goodbye, and pray that we are not led directly into WW3.

WIth all due respect to mods here, DAZ3D and elsewhere, this topic is impossible to discuss outside of our present political context. Don't even try to sanitize it. In 2000, I said regardless of my party and loyalty to it that I would vote for whoever could deliver on patent reform. Since 2000: 1. eolas, a front for UCal, sues Microsoft for use of the EMBED/OBJECT tag despite prior art. 2. Microsoft patents antialiased text despite their own Apple ][ documentation on the precedent set by the Apple's video hardware design. 3. Microsoft patents FAT32 file system despite its clear ancestry from other formats they didn't invent. This one was invalidated in September. 4. SCO purchases obscure UNIX patents and sues IBM for Linux, hoping to destroy GNU in the process as "unconstitutional" because it invalidates their case. 5. McKool-Smith purchases obscure Tektronix patent, now suing all major game vendors, all major graphics card vendors and all major computer manufacturers. Assume all but 3 prevail. These are the immediate ramifications: 1. Linux will be illegal to run on your desktop without a license. Officially it will disappear except for legacy corporate/server use. 2. The GNU will be invalidated, making the only valid software licenses either commercial or freeware/shareware. Open software development will wither as developers cower under the threat of accidentally infringing patents. Development of open formats like JPEG, PNG, Ogg Vorbis, etc., will have to be done by committees with even more lawyers than before, hamstringing that development even worse than now. Go look up the history of the SVG file format and the legal wrangling that killed it. 3. Vendors/developers of third party freeware browsers and 3D modeling/rendering applications will be forced to choose between licenses they have no revenue stream to afford, making their applications commercial, or leaving the business altogether. 4. OS X's next license will include licensing fees from Microsoft for text rendering. 5. Freeware media players/decoders will be aggressively sued out of existence. WMV3, the Windows new media codec currently unplayable on Macs will not be decoded and Quicktime will either license that codec at a hefty fee or Mac users will be "those losers who can't play movies." Long term ramifications sound paranoid, but I dare you to come to alternate conclusions: Apple and Microsoft will be de facto the only permitted OS vendors in the US, making it easier for state legislatures and Congress to pressure them to quietly implement things like the NSA snoop backdoor in Windows discovered last year. Remember that both Apple and Microsoft have to satisfy certain requirements in order to get certification for government licenses, requirements which do not allow for special government-only versions. Manufacture of "nonsecure" computers and storage media will be illegal. PGP type encryption will be held to be a weapon as the concept "privacy" becomes synonymous with hiding criminal activity. The EU and the rest of the planet has two choices: 1. Reject software patents and risk economic retaliation from the US in the form of lost contracts, trade sanctions, etc. 2. Blindly follow the schoolyard bully regardless of whether or not they believe it's in their own interests. Some will say that the Bono Bill's normalizing copyright extensions to match the EU's shows they should return the favor. Welcome to the Ownership Society. May it last a thousand years. Work makes you free.

Gee, you guys might want to be careful what you say. I think I hear the black unmarked helicopters coming.

No crap.. and they're all being piloted by pissed-off Texans who are tired of being lumped together just because a handful of idiots give the rest of us a bad name... You people that making that kind of comment are just as bad, if not worse in your own petty little ways, than those who send their countries to war for no good reason... "Don't mess with Texas. Nuke it preemptively." I might as well say, "Hitler was a bad man... let's nuke Germany", "Marcel Marceau was a mime.. I hate mimes... let's bomb France..." Signed, A Texan who just wants to make art... remember art?... isn't that what we're here for?

My apologies, FWTempest. My feelings don't usually get the best of me in this forum. I've taken this thread where it belongs more properly, my blog. Texans here, I again apologize.